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Lesson Study Cycle 1
The Theme:
To find ways to build grit in students, and encourage them to use all the tools at their disposal. We want to encourage students to take risks and work on their own.
The Content understanding goal:
Students will be able to add suffixes to base words, and recognize when words are in past tense. Students will also be able to create sentences using words from their word list. This is in preparation to a spelling test later on in the week. The unit goal is to provide students with a word bank to review, practice, and use a resource to improve their writing skills and spelling.
Day 1: Prepare
The first day of the week students are given the words for the week. Students first repeat each word after the teacher (me!). Then students copy and spell the words on the page, then finally we do a faux spelling test to see what they need to practice.
Day 2: Lesson plan day.
Students will Work on their word work for the day after I have introduced the instructions for each portion. Students are given specific instructions on how to work through the sheet while using their own tools. In order to build interest for creating sentences I encourage students to be funny with their sentences. The ultimate goal being that students use all tools available to them before asking the teacher for help.
Key Takeaway:
There is not a catch all answer to the question of building "grit". Students can often get this feeling of "hopelessness" when they work hard on something at something and still fail. Just like with a majority of adults students need to feel like their actions have an effect on their work. Even with the research and the lesson study my group performed I still feel there is an abundance of knowledge that I still need to learn in order to best serve my students.
Focus student 1
This focal student is a strong academic student who is reluctant to share with the class unless they are 100% sure that their answers are right. They struggle with self-confidence and growth mindset. They tend to be hard on themselves when they get an answer wrong which we are trying to steer away from. They struggle with motivation on tasks that they are aware will not be scored which is represented in their work (even though they will complete it, they wont always put forth their best effort). We can see in this students work that when answering the first portion of the worksheet asking to identify verbs that were written in past tense, they used a strategy. By writing the statement "I ______ yesterday," they were able to easily confirm their answers. Then, they erased the phrase and wrote the word only. They also misspelled a couple of words when they had their word lists present with them to use as a tool and only wrote one sentence. This could be a result of the effort put into the activity knowing it was not going to be for a grade or a time constraint from making sure the first portion was answered correctly. This could also be a result of the student being aware that when the time is done the class goes over the answers together.
Focus student 2
This focal student has an SST and is listed as high need for phonics reading intervention. They are also an EML (Emergent Multilingual Learner). She in usually hesitant to share aloud, but shows to participate more in math because it is their strength. Student prefers to be surrounded by peers with whom they feel most comfortable with. They bond well with focus student #1 an have been in the same classes together since 1st grade. This student only misspelled on word on the worksheet: "laughed" by omitting the 'u.' Similarly to focus student #1, they only wrote one sentence. We wondered if the student was unable to think of anther sentence, lost interest, or ran out of time before the teacher called for students' attention to share answers and sentences because of the sketches on her worksheet. We also noticed the positive affirmations written on the sheet such as good job and a self-score of 17/17 not including their sentences. This was a great opportunity for us to see the result of having a positive mindset in being proud of your accomplishments and maintaining confidence. This student is very mindful of their learning and is honest about academics they need to continue working on.
Student survey results
My group was interested to look at the data based on the student survey and compare it to what we saw on the lesson study day. As the classroom teacher it was reassuring that students at least felt that they were prepared for the spelling test even though this was only day two of our week. An interesting insight was that each of the days the word work can be different, many students added on open section of their survey that sometimes they enjoyed the word work and other days they found it "boring". (many students really enjoy the weeks where there is a word find puzzle. as an extra note, when talking with my focus student 1 she admitted that she wasn't feeling one hundred percent in the morning and when I asked her if we had done the work later would she have felt better about it she said yes.
The first thing that I really took away from this lesson cycle is how this whole process works, and how it can benefit classrooms. As a first year teacher I am obviously trying many new ideas in my classroom, and they don't all stick the landing. This lesson study has allowed me to be even more intentional with new ideas for running the classroom.
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Now for the real meat and potatoes of our lesson study, I saw many different ideas in progress. It was interesting to see just how strong routines are. This was the first time that I had told students to keep their work at their table instead of turning it in, and a few students still tried to (because that is what they would normally do). It has taught me that I need to be patient when introducing new routines in the classroom, as it will takes students time to adjust and really "learn" them. That also goes for our actual goal as well. Building grit is not something that will happen overnight, and some ideas are just not going to stick. Research shows various plans for building grit, but each one is going to work differently for each student. As a teacher I need to understand that and be ready to meet students where they are at.
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The lesson cycle also made me broaden my reading horizons and allowed me to read various helpful and interesting articles. As general note the articles really taught me that sometimes me preconceived notions of certain ideas aren't always going to be right. For example the various reasons that a student might have to work on their grit. Furthermore, My group and I were able to have meaningful conversations specifically about the research we each did, and helped us inform our decisions when it came to our lesson study. I am excited to see where the next lesson study goes, and what I can learn from it.